Abstract

delivery in terms of cost, quality and time. Guidelines regarding public procurement in Norway prevent a large public client of freely choosing contractors. In the project studied in this paper the Norwegian government property developer – Statsbygg – is implementing Lean Construction by mandating, in the tender competition, that the prime contractor and the designers use Lean Construction principles and a handful of selected methods – a mandated Lean Construction delivery system.
This paper address the following question: What are the experiences of using this mandated Lean Construction delivery system in the construction phase with a prime contract in a rehab project? The research presented in the paper is based on a case study of the construction phase of a 470 Million NOK (57 million USD) rehab project of a listed university building with (a) in-depth semi-structured interviews of eight professional key figures from the client, designer group and prime contractor and (b) a document study of project documents and experience reports from the project.
The findings show that the project failed Lean project delivery because of (I) the actors absent understanding of Lean Construction principles and ideal, (II) the lack of real collaboration, (III) the production system was not aligned properly between client and contractor and (IV) the building’s amount of unforeseen risks.
The research highlights the importance of project actors’ understanding the mechanism behind Lean Construction and the foundation of a real collaboration to reap the benefits. Whether or not Lean Construction is suitable for a rehab project is difficult to conclude based on this research. Further research is needed, where the project’s actors are more familiar with Lean Construction.

Founded in 1993, the IGLC is an international network of researchers from practice and academia in architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) who feel that the practice, education, and research of the AEC industry have to be radically renewed in order to respond to the global challenges ahead.